razib
Posts by this author
April 13, 2009
Over at Secular Right I point out that Romania is set to decriminalize consensual sexual relations between adult first-order kin. That is, incest. There are a few angles that this story offers. First is the moral-ethical one. From a rational individualist perspective how reasonable are laws which…
April 13, 2009
Over at Gene Expression Classic p-ter points to an interesting paper, Genetic Architecture of Tameness in a Rat Model of Animal Domestication:
A common feature of domestic animals is tameness - i.e. they tolerate and are unafraid of human presence and handling. To gain insight into the genetic…
April 12, 2009
That's what Dan MacArthur found in the GSS after doing a follow up on my post below.
April 12, 2009
Science Not Fiction has a review of Kröd Mandöon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire:
In Robin Hood fashion, the insecure hero, Kröd Mandöon (played by Sean Maguire), leads the struggle against the evil rule of Dongalor, a local king with big ambitions. Kröd is aided by a none-too-bright pig-man, an…
April 12, 2009
Gallup has a new report up, This Easter, Smaller Percentage of Americans Are Christian, which is rather self-explanatory. These data aren't surprising, other surveys report the same general finding. Here's an interesting chart with some long term trends:
I want to point to the numbers for…
April 11, 2009
There are nearly 7 billion human beings in the world, so I guess it shouldn't surprise us that there are adult women who decide to jump into a polar bear exhibit during feeding time. Right? When I saw this on CNN's front page one word that described the photo would be "compelling." If polar bears…
April 11, 2009
Who's manning the TARP desk?:
Less than half a dozen people are responsible for making the final decisions about which banks get part of the $700 billion in bailout money available through the Troubled Asset Relief Program, according to Department of Treasury officials. In response to a Freedom of…
April 11, 2009
Science News has an interesting piece up, Shared Differences: The architecture of our genomes is anything but basic. The main focus is on genetic variation, the possibility that there might be important information in copy number variance, and that the common disease-common variant hypothesis is…
April 11, 2009
The leader author of the PLoS Genetics paper Inferring the Demographic History of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter-Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data Set, which I blogged a few days ago left a clarifying comment:
I just have few remarks. I do not expect that the Bantu expansions are…
April 10, 2009
Megan McArdle notes:
The scale of Bernie Madoff's crimes has largely eclipsed the more interesting scam that broke around the same time: the antics of Mark Dreier, who bilked institutional investors for millions with faked securities. What we know about Madoff suggests that he may have become an…
April 10, 2009
Signatures of natural selection are not uniform across genes of innate immune system, but purifying selection is the dominant signature:
We tested the opposing views concerning evolution of genes of the innate immune system that (i) being evolutionary ancient, the system may have been highly…
April 9, 2009
Just though readers might be interested to know that we have a a non-Icelandic astrophysicist at ScienceBlogs now. Also, ScienceBlogs now has a photolog manned by a rotating crew. If you're not on a Lynx browser it might be worth your time.
April 9, 2009
Inferring the Demographic History of African Farmers and Pygmy Hunter-Gatherers Using a Multilocus Resequencing Data Set:
The transition from hunting and gathering to farming involved a major cultural innovation that has spread rapidly over most of the globe in the last ten millennia. In sub-…
April 9, 2009
Jonah's interview of Judith Rich Harris is much recommended. Clearly related to my post on adoptive parents.
April 9, 2009
Via Dienekes, Differential parental investment in families with both adopted and genetic children:
Stepchildren are abused, neglected and murdered at higher rates than those who live with two genetically related parents. Daly and Wilson used kin selection theory to explain this finding and labeled…
April 9, 2009
The GSS has a variable, GENEGOO2, with an N ~ 2,500, that asks:
Some people say that genetic testing may cause trouble. Others think it is a wonderful medical advance. Based on what you know, do you think genetic testing will do more harm than good or more good than harm?
Below the fold are…
April 8, 2009
The dark side of Dubai:
"The thing you have to understand about Dubai is - nothing is what it seems," Karen says at last. "Nothing. This isn't a city, it's a con-job. They lure you in telling you it's one thing - a modern kind of place - but beneath the surface it's a medieval dictatorship."
The…
April 8, 2009
The New York Times has an awesome interactive map which shows which sectors the foreign born from various countries are concentrated. Nothing too surprising, but nice to see it quantitatively displayed. Below the fold screenshots from "Computer software developers" and "Skilled construction workers…
April 8, 2009
Women May Be Sniffing Out Biologically-relevant Information From Underarm Sweat:
Sniffed alone, the underarm odors smelled equally strong to men and women. When fragrance was introduced, only two of 32 scents successfully blocked underarm odor when women were doing the smelling; in contrast, 19…
April 8, 2009
David Brooks has a new column grandly titled The End of Philosophy. Heather Mac Donald at Secular Right chides him for his criticism of the New Atheists, while John Derbyshire offers guarded praise. It seems to me that the jab at the New Atheists was something of a throwaway line and I lean more…
April 8, 2009
I only know about Phenylketonuria (PKU) because it is an elementary example of an autosomal recessive disease. Newborns are routinely tested, because those with PKU may develop mental retardation on a normal diet. That's about all I knew, but this from Wikipedia:
If PKU is diagnosed early enough…
April 7, 2009
A Tale of Two Depressions:
Conclusion:
To summarise: the world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30.
The good news, of…
April 6, 2009
Interesting article about the difficulties of Indian bachelors who reside in the United States finding wives in India, Ineligible Bachelors: Indian Men Living in U.S. Strike Out Brides and Parents Back Home Get Picky as Economy Makes America Look Risky. Much of the article is about plain economics…
April 3, 2009
I watched Clockwork Orange a few months ago. More recently I've been reading some economic history, as well as the utopian visions of early 19th century reformers. From these two vantage points I've come to the conclusion that the whole genre of "dystopia" is really about lowered expectations.…
April 3, 2009
Talk Islam points to a controversy over a comment that the Muslim chaplain made in regards to apostasy on a listserv. First he outlines the dominant legal position with Islam today & historically in regards to apostasy:
There are a few places on the Net where one can find informed discussions…
April 3, 2009
A new paper on the genetics of height, Meta-Analysis of Genome-Wide Scans for Human Adult Stature Identifies Novel Loci and Associations with Measures of Skeletal Frame Size:
Recent genome-wide (GW) scans have identified several independent loci affecting human stature, but their contribution…
April 1, 2009
Peter Suderman asks, Is Robert Heinlein Our Best Pulp Novelist? I suppose this hinges on what you mean by "best," but it seems like Heinlein is probably at the front of any list. Form Isaac Asimov's memoir in regards to Heinlein:
...From the moment his first story appeared, an awed science fiction…